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The Revival of Interest 
In Southern Letters. 


BY CHAS. W. KENT, M. A., PH.D. 


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Literature in the South. 


BY HAMILTON W. MABIE. 


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1900: 
B. F. JOHNSON PUBLISHING COs, 


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THE REVIVAL OF INTEREST IN 
SOUTHERN LETTERS. 


THE REVIVAL OF INTEREST IN SOUTHERN 
LETTERS, AND A PLEA FOR THE 
PRESERVATION OF THE SOUTH- 

| LAND’S PAST. 


BY CHARLES W. KENT, M. A., PH.D.* 
Linden Kent Professor of English Literature, University of Virginia. 


ore by permission of the Faculty of the University 
of Tennessee. ) 


Y last formal address at this University, Mr. 
President, ladies and gentlemen, was delivered 
in your beautiful Young Men’s Christian As- 

sociation building, and its theme was “The Outlook 
for Southern Literature.’ With no intention of trav- 
ersing the same ground, | have allowed myself to be 
controlled in part by the pleasant memory of the 
- favorable hearing then received, in larger part by my 
own present and pressing occupations, in selecting, 
as the theme for this day and this platform, “The Re- 
vival of Interest in Southern Letters, and a Plea for 
the Preservation of our Southland’s Past.” Gratified, 
gentlemen of the faculty, by your invitation to return 
to this the scene of such pleasant and such prosperous 


*Annual address at the University of Tennessee Commencement June 
13, 1899. Delivered without notes or manuscript, the printed form is the 
substance but not the exact fashion of the address. 


iad: 


8 


years of my professional life, but somewhat depressed 
by the gravity of the duty imposed upon me, I bal- 
anced in my mind whether I should attempt to please 
by some fervid flight of fancy those whose ears are 
readily tickled by graceful words, or rather utter a 
more sedate and thoughtful message, which, if by 
chance it reach a larger audience, may prove a hint 
of my own aim and desire and a suggestion not value- 
less to us all. This platform seems, too, peculiarly 
suited for the discussion of such a theme, for from it 
one speaks to audiences not so homogeneous as to 
commend or condemn with preconceived and fore- 
determined unanimity, but to audiences representing 
variety of origin and history and ready to listen to 
any proposition honestly put forward and to examine 
any claim frankly expounded. Moreover, reverbera- 
tions from this platform roll, as I know, into neigh- 
boring States, and if the speaker voices thoughts that 
are clear and true they may, perchance, leave faint 
impressions elsewhere as here. 

Mr. President, most honored friend, permit me to 
identify myself with you in order to gain the added 
force of your approval and sound judgment in saying 
that we who have lived through the period since 
Sixty-Five, who have belonged to the generation that 
coincides with this significant third of our closing 
century, have passed through two stages of experi- 
ence and are now well into the third. Our first was 
the stage of 


s 


9 


SILENT SUFFERING, 


or sometimes even of sullen solitude. What more 
natural than that a people sustained by an assured 
confidence in the righteousness of its cause, fired by 
unselfish and unremunerated zeal, flushed by timely 
but transient triumphs; then worn by overwhelming 
hardships, grieved by uncounted and unawaited dis- 
asters, and finally humiliated by a delayed but none 
the less direful defeat; what rnore natural, I say, than 
that a people thus tried should in the first decade—in 
the midst of social revolution and strained and sad- 
dening readjustments—have clung to its glorious past 
as its only sacred heritage. We clung to our achieve- 
ments in our country’s past, knew in our hearts and 
felt that no section of this country had added so 
many stars to the national flag, given so much terri- 
tory to the Union, played so active a part in making 
the nation, and so long presided over its destinies as 
the South. We could not forget that in the time that 
_ tried men’s souls, the fruitful days of the Revolution, 
Southern leaders had been in the very forefront of 
every patriotic movement; that for fifty-two of the 
first sixty-four years of our national life Southern men 
occupied the President’s chair; that for sixty-two 
years the Chief Justice of our Supreme Court was a 
Southerner; that the war of 1812 was forced by South- 
erners and won by a Southern general; that this 
Union is indebted to Southern men for the great 
Northwest, and to a Virginian for the Louisiana ac- 


¥ 


Io 


quisition, which will soon be fittingly celebrated ; that 
the great Texas empire was acquired by the South, 
and Florida became ours under Southern statesman- 
ship. Pardon a Virginian’s pride as he recalls that 
Cornwallis surrendered to Washington, of Westmore- 
land; that Mexico yielded to Taylor of Orange and 
Scott of Petersburg; that Lewis and Clark went upon 
their famous explorations from Albemarle, and that 
your own John Sevier was born in Rockingham. 

But, sirs, these and hundreds of other things just as 
significant—Charleston’s interest in letters, Georgia’s 
contribution to female education, and Tennessee’s 
pride in her experiments in State-making—though 
remembered with pride, nay, even in those first sad 
days of reconstruction, with something perhaps of 
supercilious sullenness and injured self-esteem, were 
rarely mentioned save within the family circle. We 
refused to reveal our precious memories to those who 
might smile scornfully at our latent pride, or to de- 
liver our treasures to those who might handle them 
with irreverent hands. The past, at least, was ours, 
and we would hold it sacred and speak of it, if at all, 
with something of that solemn pathos and subdued 
sadness with which we mentioned our sainted dead. 
Our next stage was that of 


PREMATURE PATRIOTISM, 


and found its salient catchword in the glib phrase, 
the “New South.” The wiser leaders of this new 


II 


movement were not oblivious of the past, nor lacking 
in courage in portraying its greatness, but there were 
many Southerners who used the phrase with such trite 
flippancy as to suggest their own ignorance of their 
fathers’ deeds, or with such boldness and blatant as- 
sertiveness as seemingly to chide their fathers for 
their adoration of the past. The phrase “New South” 
was a word to conjure with, and bottomless booms, 
shrewd deals, fanciful financiering flourished under its 
aegis, and our firm grasp on some of the strong prin- 
ciples we once had stood for seemed loosened and our 
love of the old-fashioned cardinal virtues lessened. 
Old men thought—and many young ones shared their 
thinking—that this “New South’ meant breaking 
with the old South., Let us bury the past came to 
mean far more than burying its discords, its animosi- 
ties, its disasters, its defeats, its despairs; it seemed to 
mean as well its local attachments, its loves, its life, 
its splendid traditions, its charm of manner, its chiv- 
_ alry and high ideals, its achievements and its hallowed 
history. The departure from proverbial dignity 
seemed too far, the readiness of offered though unso- 
licited apologies, the subserviency of prompt prostra- 
tion to the East was neither flattering to them nor 
just to ourselves. 

But it cannot be denied that this movement was of 
value in calling us away—at least the younger men— 
from the failures of the past, from repinings for for- 
tunes lost and pleasures vanished, from lives of luxu- 


@ 


I2 


rious idleness or of unsustained purpose, and in re- © 
minding us of the abundant opportunities for useful 
and successful living. The history of the South’s 
recent growth is also the history of the South’s re- 
duction of her army of idlers. From the busy, bust- 
ling East we have learned good lessons of well-de- 
fined purpose in life, careful. plans and preparation 
for our careers, and that persevering and persistent 
labor that extorts success. The West and North had 
shown by hundreds and thousands of striking exam- 
ples that Southern youth under conditions favorable 
to energy and effort have in them all the elements 
of success. What was needed in the South was not a 
change of men, as much as a change of conditions, 
and the changed condition of the “New South,” with 
its enterprises and its industries, its multiplying busi- 
ness and its growing demand of men, render it now. 
unnecessary and unwise for her sons to leave her for 
fairer fields. 

In the days of our humiliation we had not cared 
for the splendid literary achievements of our Puritan 
brethren, but in the days of our growing interest in 
our renewed Union we set to studying our American 
literature, learning, to our surprise, from the omis- 
sions as well as from the developed chapters of our 
Manuals, that American literature is “‘of necessity,’ as 
one of their writers says, “that of New England and 
New York.” I venture the assertion that our South- 
ern youth to-day are as familiar with the writers of — 


13 


the New England school as are the boys of Boston 
or of Concord, but the New England boys—alas! it 
is true of our Southern youth as well—are lamenta- 
bly ignorant of the literature of the South. Our 
American boys, without in any wise undervaluing 
these Puritan productions, should recognize that the 
knee-buckled knickerbockers, the quiet Quakers, the 
wide-awake Westerners and the self-conceited South- 
erners have not failed to contribute their share to the 
sum total of this American literature. 

And it is this lesson that we are learning as we ad- 
vance in our third period of 


SELF-RESPECTING LOYALTY. 


We are full partners now in ali the common posses- 
sions of our country, and glory, without reserve or 
apology, in all her national achievements. We are 
proud of New England’s contributions to the world’s 
best thought. We visit New York with the Ameri- 
-can’s proud sense of ownership of his metropolis. We 
have incorporated Pennsylvania’s history into our 
own colonial records, and we look upon the West 
with radiant maternal pride. In return we expect 
that the South shall be recognized fairly and fully, 
without prejudice of its storied past or apology for its 
present. If ours be the burden of the war let ours be, 
too, the sympathy such burden should elicit. 

The South, let it be known once for all, is proud 
of its past, though there may have been mistakes and 

* 


14 


suffering due to them, but it is far more concerned 
with the present, with its problems and possibilities, 
and it is bold enough to hope that when she has fin- 
ished following the will-o’-the-wisp of political vaga- 
ries, relearned her old lesson of devotion to principle, 
given over her self-defensive and self-seeking policies 
and conceived more broadly and unselfishly of her 
duties to our common country, she may again be 
ready to take in the Nation’s councils the place, she 
so long held, of political primacy. 

But, Mr. President, the feature of this revival to 
which I shall address myself more particularly is the 


REVIVAL OF LETTERS. 


In the pertods when we were either remembering 
our past with silent sadness or striving to forget it 
altogether, we allowed ample time for many of those 
who made that past and knew its history to depart, 
and we buried not merely many a man, but many a 
fact held in faithful and reverent memory. Our 
Southland has sore occasion to regret the hushed 
voices and withered hands, for the stories they might 
have told, the records they might have written, are 
perhaps as irrevocable as the spirits that would have 
inspired them. Day by day we are forced to record 
the deaths of those who go to their graves with death- 
less stories of their eventful lives unwritten. 

But there is a growing recognition of this unfor- 
tunate state, and there is now an earnest, at times al- 


15 


most feverish and inconsiderate haste, in gathering 
and recording this material. Let us grant ungrudg- 
ingly that this healthy and hopeful change is due in 
large part to our Eastern and Foreign critics, who 
by praising our achievements have given us confi- 
dence in our own judgments and enlarged our pride 
in our own writers. Their demand, too, to know 
more, and the avidity with which they seize upon all 
that is given, is a part of that revival of interest which 
is now witnessed in many ways. 


It is shown, for example, by the present epidemic 
of Southern magazines. If boys devote themselves 
to making toy boats it is generally because there is 
water near where they may test them, and though the 
boats may be frail and faulty, they may prove to be 
good first studies in ship-building. If editors and 
publishers launch their magazines it is because with 
more or less shrewdness they suspect that there is at 
hand a buoyant sea of appreciation upon which they 

may float them in safety, and if these magazines, built 
without good business skill, tempting the fickle pub- 
lic sea without the prosperous breezes of financial sup- 
port, the remunerative cargo of advertisements, and 
the judicious steering of an experienced helmsman, 
should founder and go down, at least the costly ex- 
periment may aid the next adventurer. 


More significant far than the numerous experi- 
ments with that constant chimera—a Southern maga- 
zine—are the open columns of the magazines already 


16 


established and prosperous. The venerable Parke 
Godwin writes me that the two leading literary edi- 
tors of the New York Evening Post—the arch anti- 
slavery journal of America—have both been Vir- 
ginians, John R. Thompson and George Cary Eggle- — 
ston, and if it were ever true that Northern editors 
discriminated against Southern writers as such, it is 
no longer. On the contrary, the editors fully realize 
what Pancoast, of Philadelphia, has so well expressed: 
“The Southern story writers have done more than 
give us studies of new localities; we feel instinctively 
a different quality in their work. If we contrast it 
with the productions of New England, intellectual, 
self-examining, self-conscious, we feel the richer col- 
oring, the warmer blood and quicker pulses of the 
South. Read the most characteristic of Hawthorne’s 
stories and then turn to Mars’ Chan or Meh Lady of 
Thomas Nelson Page. It is like passing from the 
world of thought to the world of action, from the 
analysis of life to living. The fine-spun problems 
of mind and conscience have no place in this world, 
but instead we have a story of which men and women 
never tire, which is almost as old in its essential ele- 
ments as human life. It is a world to be alive in, a 
young world, where the men are full of knightly cour- 
tesies and knightly courage, and where the women - 
are good and fair; a world of young heroes who can 
lead a cavalry charge up the slope to fall under the 
very lips of the cannon; of simple-hearted slaves, 


17 


whose lives are too barren to hold anything beyond 
an unquestioning and indestructible fidelity; of wo- 
men who seem to belong with those heroines of 
Homer, Shakespeare, or Scott, whom the world sup- 
poses itself to have outgrown. Or let us put such 4 
book as Cable’s Grandissimes beside such a keen 
and clever study of Boston as Howell’s “A Woman’s 
Reason,’ and it is like the tropic warmth of the gulf 
stream after the chill of northern waters; let us place 
the fair, gentle, placid Priscilla, that old time Puritan 
ideal of maidenly perfection, beside one of Cable’s 
heroines, a creature of life, impulse, and movement, 
with a sparkle of the Gallic blood; vivacious, sensi- 
tive, appealing, changeable—and we shall know that, 
whatever else this Southern literature may be, at the 
least it is different.” And it is because editors recog- 
nize this difference that they have freely welcomed 
the best of our Southern writers; it is because they 
recognize in our Southern poets not only different 
themes—the swaying, sighing pine, the mocking 
bird, the generous marshes—but a different music, a 
livelier lilt, or a more lingering melody, that they 
gladly print their songs; and they welcome our more 
serious essays too when we speak for ourselves and 
frankly. 

When your faultless manuscript, my brother, is re- 
turned to you, with a politely stereotyped note of 
thanks, question first the manuscript’s merits, and 
then the editor’s malevolence, and if, my young poet, 


18 


your verses are not at once appreciated remember 
that the “South’s sad singers” waited in vain for the 
reasonable reward of their labors and did not live 
long enough to see the fame which a tardy world 
now bestows. 

Lanier, long recognized by a growing circle of the 
select in England and America, is fast securing that 
safer fame which is found in the love of the many. 
Chautauqua, which fitly represents that large class 
between the favored few, who enjoy full college privi- 
leges, and the great number who are denied them, 
last year made Lanier the patron saint, so to speak, 
of the graduating class, and lines from his mellifluous 
poems were quoted in sermon and speech, under 
trees and in halls. His poems were read by hun- 
dreds who a few years ago had never heard of him. 


John R. Thompson, the courteous gentleman, 
lecturer, poet, and editor, the friend of Tennyson and 
Thackeray abroad, the patron of Aldrich and Ike 
Marvel, Hayne, and Timrod at home, has just been 
honored in his old alma mater. I missed, sir, to my 
great regret, the exercise of yesterday, because my 
esteem for Thompson’s life and talents constrained 
me to be present at the unveiling of his portrait. From 
his alma mater will, it is hoped, soon issue an edition 
of his uncollected poems. Mississippi is preparing 
to honor with a bronze statue Irwin Russell, who first 
discovered the literary possibilities of negro dialect 
and first appreciated the literary value of the pathos 


es 


and humor of the negro character, and Charleston 
having already raised a monument to Paul Hayne, 
is now planning to pay tardy honor to her more bril- 
liant poet, the sweetest singer of the war, the incar- 
nate spirit of Southern song, Henry Timrod. The 
new edition of his poems brings him within reach of 
the general public, and promises a popularity denied 
him by the exigencies of the war. 

And, ladies and gentlemen, I invite you one and all 
to gather on the seventh of next October in the pub- 
lic hall of the University of Virginia to share with us 
in what has been called “the most notable event’ of 
our literary annals, the presentation to the University 
of a bronze bust of Edgar Allan Poe. The semi-cen- 
tennial of his death is to be celebrated in his alma 
mater by summoning around this faithful artistic rep- 
resentation of his face and spirit the friends and ad- 
mirers of Poe from all lands and giving them an 
opportunity to testify to his literary greatness and to 
--their obligations to him. Over a hundred papers and 
magazines have had accounts of this bronze bust, and 
the movement has brought about what has been called 
a Poe revival. To the students of the University will 
belong the credit, and this thought suggests another 
evidence of this reviving interest in Southern letters, 
and that is the attitude of institutions of learning to- 
ward it.. Sporadic investigation largely as a matter 
of curiosity has been heretofore undertaken, but at 
a number of our Southern institutions these authors 


20 


are now studied without any misgiving or apology. 
Withoutoverestimating any work because of its geo- 
graphical origin, leaders of Southern youth are feel- 
ing more and more that they should be informed 
about Southern as well as Eastern books, and pro- 
vision 1s being more amply made for the careful and 
scholarly investigation of Southern literary and his- 
torical questions. My brother alumni of the Univer- 
sity of Virginia who honor me here will rejoice with 
me that to our library has just been given an endow- 
ment fund, the interest of which is to be used in pro- 
curing books on Virginia history and literature. Am 
I not enough at home in the midst of friends, who for 
five years were kind to me far beyond my deserts, to 
beg without presumption that some one to whom the 
gift would be easy, provide here the means for a care-" 
ful study of the rich unwritten history of Tennessee? 

There seems to be evidence enough that there is 
at present genuine and increasing interest in South- 
ern letters, but care must be taken to fix this interest 
permanently and prevent it from becoming a mere 
transient and illusory fad or fashion. Such renewed 
zeal in Southern letters will prove valuable only if 
persistent and patient; for what is to be accomplished 
is a task not for a day, but for years, yet it is a task 
well worth performing. 

The works of some of our best authors are extant 
in incomplete editions and need careful re-editing by 
some practiced hand. Hayne’s writings after 1882 


21 


have not, 1 believe, been collected, nor is there a sin- 
gle handy volume containing all of Russell’s work. 
Marshall’s writings on the Federal Constitution, I 
am told, have never been published in full, and many 
of Jefferson’s letters are unprinted. Moreover, the 
writings of some of our authors have never been col- 
lected or edited at all, and if they are to be found at 
all must be searched for in the pages of defunct pe- 
riodicals or even the columns of the ordinary dailies. 
Twenty-six years after his death, there is no collec- 
tion of the writings, prose or poetry, of John R. 
Thompson; the semi-prophetic writings of Burwell 
are mainly to be found in DeBow’s Review, and I 
know of happy poetical paraphrases of Scott and 
Dickens that have never been printed at all. These 
are mere signs of a widespread condition. There 
are nearly fifteen hundred authors mentioned in 
Manly’s catalogue of Southern writers, and yet it is 
doubtful whether more than one-third have been fully 
_ edited. 

But there is another source yet from which much 
is to be expected. I was recently reading an old let- 
ter written by a visitor to Mt. Vernon in the year 
before Washington died. Written with the freedom 
of a private communication and with the vividness 
and vivacity for which the letters of ladies are famous, 
it gave a better insight into the social and domestic 
life of the day than could a whole volume of objective 
disquisitions on the abstract theme. The rich treas- 


22 


ures hid in garret trunks, once poured itco the his- 
torian’s lap; secrets, social and political, now stored 
in old family letters once told, will furnish new chap- 
ters of surprising charm and inestimable value. Let 
those who know where such treasures lie, where such 
secrets are, go to the limit of propriety and respect to 
persons in making them known. There are whole 
series of letters that might be published, and even — 
complete diaries that with judicious omissions, might 

be made public. As life is made up of details, so 
literature relies both for its material and its history 
on these apparent trivialities, and we shall not have an 
adequate account of Southern life and Southern let- 
ters until this material shall have been gathered and 
classified, then grasped by some one with such gifts 
of generalization as to comprehend in one consistent 
whole these perplexing minutiae. New England has 
written its own history thoroughly, and has made her 
recognition easy by first recognizing herself. There 
are no unknown writers in New England, no meri- 
torious productions still unprinted, no important facts 
unexamined and unrecorded, but the Southern States 
have paid but little attention to such matters until 
recently, and even now the several historical and lite- 
rary societies devoted to this purpose are craving 
financial support, begging aid they should have by 
right, and deploring lack of general interest in their 
aim and undertakings. In the mean time there is not 
a good manual of Southern literature, though Miss 


23 


Manly’s is a useful catalogue of our writers; there is 
no good volume given to the criticism of our poets; 
no adequate discussion anywhere of our prose writers; 
no connected account of our literary movements and 
measures; no good anthology of our poetry, except 
for our lyrics, and no reasonably complete collection 
of biographical sketches readily accessible. Our 
youth are of necessity growing up in ignorance of the 
South’s achievements, because those who could have 
told us neglected it in their day, and those who may 
tell it, though less well, have not yet taken up the 
task. 


Yet, without full knowledge of the South’s contri- 
butions to our national history and literature, the true 
and finished story of this nation cannot be written. 
Our part in colonial history and in the making of the 
nation is cheerfully conceded by all save a few preju- 
diced and blinded bigots, but there seems to be on the 
part of those who write of a later period a latent fear 
-lest they concede too much, a cautious and pains- 
taking anxiety lest recognition be too frank and com- 
mendation too generous. Yet there are signs that the 

Von Holst school of historical criticism, foreign in 
_ its origin and foreign to our ideals of free thought, 
free speech, free institutions and free enjoyment of 
all the immunities and privileges of citizens, freedom 
to admire all men of heroic mould and saintly lives, 
freedom to claim all greatness, whether it served our 
narrower purpose or not—is losing somewhat its pres- 


24 


tige and the wiser and gentler spirits of our day ad- 
mire sometimes where they cannot approve and 
proudly acclaim what they have not always loved. 

It is true a recent writer speaks most disparagingly 
of Calhoun, but then a far wiser man, who totally 
disagreed with Calhoun, has praised his splendid intel- 
lect, his honesty and his courage. It is true that our 
new Congressional Library, with its ample propor- 
tions, has no room for the names of Lee and Jack- 
son and Stuart, but then Washington politicians must 
live, they think, and their faint-hearted fanaticism is 
proverbially a part of their stock in trade. What dif- 
ference does it make? Has not Henderson given 
Jackson his right place? Does anyone now dare dis- 
parage the superb leadership of the great military 
chieftain, Lee, and do we not at heart approve the 
good judgment of the cavalry prince of the Franco-_ 
Prussian war, Frederick Carl, who would hang above 
his own picture that of no cavalry leader save that 
of our own dashing and daring Jeb Stuart? 

Our united country cannot afford to forget these 
men any more than it can surrender Maury, our 
greatest geographer, or Audubon, or Clay, or relin- 
quish its claim to William C. Preston, perhaps next 
to Edward Everett, our greatest academical orator. 
Nor must the history of our nation’s life when it re- 
cords the unsurpassed devotion of the Puritan fathers 
leave unrecorded the quenchless heroism and un- 
stinted ardor of sturdy Scotch-Irish Presbyterianism, 


25 


which everywhere erected twin altars to learning and 
to God; nor the inflaming evangelism of Whitfield 
and Asbury, and the new spirituality of Methodism; 
nor the conservative influence of the Episcopal 
church, with its perpetual contributions to substan- 
tial culture and high refinement; nor the democratic 
influence by example and model of all congregational 
forms of church government, which foster the spirit 
of individual responsibility and a sense of sane equal- 
ity. The religious life of the South has been singu- 
larly free from whims and fancies, and if the whole 
body of theological writings, sound, orthodox, and 
strong, could now be collected it would be a bulwark 
against encroaching laxity and a fortress of safe con- 
servatism. _ 

But even with literature taken more narrowly, with 
poetry and fiction, the state of affairs is totally un- 
satisfactory. We may without discouragement admit 
the relative poverty of our literature in view of its 
_ present promise, but it is easy enough to select a few 
names which apart from all sentiment—though I do 
not know why we should abolish sentiment—fully de- 
serve our recognition and our study. Yet when we 
turn to the usual hand-books we are led to believe 
that they count for little. They have challenged the 
admiration of the foreign world, but they receive little 
notice in the pages of our text-books, and less, alas, 
at our own hands. I am not inclined to bring charges 
of prejudice, for I know too well the difficulty of pro- 


26 


curing information about these writers, and I am 
willing to defend these text-book authors by saying 
that they, as we, are ignorant, but this, friends, is my 
contention, that we must hasten the day when neither 
through ignorance nor prejudice can it happen that 
Stedman can give fifty pages to Walt Whitman with 
his “huge collops of the raw material of poetry” and 
“his barbaric yawp,’ and five lines to the divinely 
gifted Timrod; that Richardson should give forty 
pages to Cooper and four to that pioneer of romance, 
Simms; that Pancoast, in my opinion, the most im- 
partial and fair-minded writer who has as yet entered 
the field of American literary criticism, should in a 
book devoted to literature, give as much space to 
Franklin as to Poe, and leave entirely unmentioned 
Father Ryan and Father Tabb, and have no word for 
James Barron Hope, twice summoned by his State, 
and once by his country, to recite memorial poems; 
that Pattee should give as much space to Howells as 
to Cable, Harris, and Page combined, or should find 
several pages for the discussion of the Rev. Mr. Roe, 
and not room to mention even the names of Robert 
Burns Wilson and James Lane Allen; or finally, that 
Houghton, Mifflin & Co. should give the sanction of 
their dignified seal to a collection of Masterpieces of 
American Literature, which includes Mr. O’Reilly’s 
prosaic lines on The Puritan, and omits Poe’s Raven! 

Brothers of the South, nay, brothers everywhere, 
who love fairness, appreciate merit, and earnestly de- 


27 


sire Our country’s greatness of mind and heart, as 
well as of extent and might, it is ours, it is yours, to 
labor, with love, if possible, but always honestly and 
earnestly, that our writers, wherever born, wherever 
they live, may receive their due. The task here in the 
South is most difficult, for we were ever too prone to 
let the dead past bury its dead, and the future will 
find even more difficulty than we if it is left to assume 
a labor of love unaccomplished by us. Young men 
of this University, young men of all Universities, with 
no apology and no arrogance, no boasting and no 
browbeating, with loving labor, with honest minds, 
and with a strong sense of the sanctity of truth, save 
for your country and yourselves the lives and labors 
of your ancestors. 


The time, beyond all other times, is favorable. In 
the busy days of our colonial life we found little time 
for letters, and devoted ourselves in the days of 
nation-making to state-papers, speeches and com- 
mentaries. Between 1800 and 1850, our first national 
period, began much of our best literature. The lite- 
tary momentum then acquired carried us with com- 
mendable attainments through the decade of the pre- 
monition of war, and even through the war itself. 
From the war to 1876 the period of reconstruction 
lasted. That year signalized by the centennial of our 
country’s existence was perhaps more signally 
marked—by the peaceful decision of the Hayes-Tilden 
contest, the direst threat our reunited union has ever 


28 


had, the withdrawal of troops from Louisiana, and 
Hampton’s election in South Carolina. The recon- 
struction days were over and our country was again 
reunited, but there is needed for a reunion more than 
legislative enactments and the withdrawal of forces; 
there are needed common ideals, similar sentiments, 
a pride in patriotism. ‘These had, I believe, been 
slowly, perhaps, and steadily growing, but an im- 
mense impulse was given them by the recent war with 
Spain. We may differ, as no doubt we do, honestly, 
about that war, its causes, its necessity, its conse- 
quences, but we are as one, I presume, in believing 
that its battles by land and by sea showed that our 
manhood had not degenerated, it showed further that 
there are no sectional dividing lines in personal 
bravery, and it showed again to the surprise of some, 
the gratification of all, that this, our common coun- 
try, was, nay is, united more closely and compactly 
than we knew. The spirit of the time is promised 
peace. We have had all the excitement, the stir, the 
mental inspiration and elation of a successful war 
and we have sunk back quietly into the lap of pros- 
perity. Our hearts have been warmed, not over- 
heated or hardened; our pride has been kindled into 
enthusiasm. The value of an outside force in cement- 
ing domestic parts has been felt and the new motive 
force of a splendid heroism has served the double pur- 
pose of a test of manhood and an incentive to great 
deeds. In this full patriotism of the present day there 


29 


is no stain of sectionalism, no sorrows of division. 
There is much to increase our love of country, noth- 
ing to lessen our love of the state. 

We recall that once upon a time the splendid fleet 
of proud Spain sailed forth to meet and destroy the 
forces of a little green island in a northern sea; from 
the sunken Armada the victorious English navy car- 
ried back not only the triumphant news of a signal 
victory but the rich cargo of national pride and confi- 
dence. These made England stronger and more glo- 
rious than ever; there was a joy in living, a bound- 
ing expansiveness in the contemplation of her new 
territory beyond the sea, her victories in her own 
waters, her supremacy over domestic contentions, her 
united country, and out of them sprang almost with- 
out preparation and unexpectedly the splendid ex- 
pression of the world’s best thought. The Elizabethan 
era in literature is the Elizabethan era of natural pros- 
perity and self-respect. 

We have heard of another conflict between the sons 
of old Spain and the descendants of these nations she 
some three hundred years ago strove to subjugate, 
and the analogy may not be fanciful, that out of the 
victories of Manila bay and Santiago may spring a 
new pride, a new patriotism, a new national purpose 
that may find its best expression not in a new and ex- 
panded government, but in a newly expanded and re- 
splendent literature. Pride and patriotism before now 
have been translated into song and story. This is 


30 


just the time for generous and gracious emulation in 
claiming our full part in this nation, and just the time 
of peace and plenty for leisure and labor in substan- 
tiating our claim. Now or never, it would seem, is 
the time not merely for making history, but for re- 
cording the history we have made. 

The surest pledge of a nation’s present is her faith 
in a heroic past; the best guarantee of a nation’s fu- 
ture is her full use of the present opportunities. And, 
sirs, her greatest opportunities to-day are found in 
her educational institutions, at once the garner-houses 
and seed-distributors of our literary life. In such in- 
stitutions as this, zealous professors and loving and 
ambitious disciples must unite to increase the sum of 
our rich stores; from such institutions as this, must 
go forth the professors themselves and their scholars 
to give the people more of the knowledge they have 
acquired. Let a university be in the focus of the 
world’s past learning, but let it be a lens to dissemi- 
nate the inspiring rays of light. The duties of a uni- 
versity must always be twofold, to collect, collate and 
classify knowledge and to apply knowledge to life, 
which is wisdom. The old theory that scholarship is 
the sole end and aim of a university career has given 
away now to the higher, nobler conception that a uni- 
versity’s higher purpose is to fit men for life. The 
world needs men of complete character more than 
men of crammed craniums, and character develop- 
ment finds a sure and potential stimulus in the study 


31 


of the deeds and thoughts of our greatest leaders, our 
prudent counsellors, our star-guided geniuses. 

The privileges of our universities and colleges are 
great. It is theirs to foster and extend this patriotic 
regard for American institutions and prepare men to 
meet their needs. The professors must assume the 
anxious and responsible labor of moulding minds and 
must be content to do the extra work required by 
their high places, without extra remuneration or even 
adequate emolument. Students, too, must pay the 
penalty of learning by bearing patiently and bravely 
the hardship it imposes, and meet obstacles with 
the good cheer of one challenged to overcome rather 
than with the depression of one doomed to defeat. 
Professors and students alike are laboring that others 
entering into their labors may learn the lesson of 
deeper and purer love of state, and make more sure 
and lasting our state’s permanent prosperity. Does 
the state, then, owe nothing to her institutions? In 
_ her organic capacity the state can do little towards 
making men of her boys, true citizens of her subjects, 
save by providing the environments in which growth 
_ may be attained and wisdom acquired. The discipline 
needed is to be found in the universities. If battles 
are won by men behind the guns, it is well to remem- 
ber that behind the men were the schools where they 
were trained or the stern discipline of ship’s school- 
ing. The state’s clear duty to herself and her citizens 
is to contribute of her finances, the inconsiderable 


OS Sih 


32 


portion needed to equip her universities and enable 
men of brain and breadth to do her work. No state 
proud of her achievements and concerned about her 
prospects dare act niggardly toward her university, 
for the university is the conservator of her history 
and should interpret to the children of the day that 
experience which teaches for the future. 

Pride in the past is the regenerative force of the 
future. As is the state’s interest in education so is the 
guarantee of her prosperity. It is now a generally ac- 
cepted axiom of our prudential philosophy that a 
father can leave his son no better fortune than a good 
education. A cultivated mind and a well rounded 
character firmly rooted in fixed principles far out- 
value gold and silver. A state can never measure its 
wealth in taxable property, for its real treasures are 
its true men. Therefore she can give her children no 
greater boon than the opportunity for thorough train- 
ing. The collected wisdom of the state will not 
transcend the individual wisdom of her wisest men, 
who, whatever else they neglect, will not omit the 
education of their children. 


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LITERATURE IN THE SOUTH. 


Apropos of this address of Dr. Kent’s we reprint, by permission the fol- 
lowing editorial from THE OuTLooK for December 2, 1899, written by 
Mr. Hamilton W. Mabie, of New York: 


In the widening of literary activity which during 
the past two decades has been giving us something 
approaching a national literature, the South has 
borne a very notable part; indeed, it may be said that 
it has borne the chief part. At the close of the war 
American literature meant, to the vast majority of 
readers in this country and abrvad, the New England 
writers, with Irving, Bryant, and Poe; and there are 
readers, and even writers of text-books on the sub- 
ject, who are still at this point. But the country has 
gone far beyond it; the old reputations are safe, but 
we are living in a broader day, and the sections are 
lost in the Nation. Every part of the country has 
found some expression in literature, and the open- 
minded student of the spiritual progress of America 
_ hears a chorus of voices where he once heard only a 
few individual tones. 

To this increasing volume of literary expression the 
South has made a contribution of the most original 
and significant kind. The genius of the old South 
went into the management of public affairs, and gave 
the country a group of statesmen who would have 


[ 35 ] 


36 


added dignity to the most illustrious periods of states- 
manship. Such men as Washington, Jefferson, Madi- 
son, and Marshall, to cite the earliest examples, do 
not suffer by comparison with the foremost public 
men of any country; and the traditions of ability, 
character, and devotion to the public service created 
by these eminent servants of the State were sustained 
to the very middle of the century. In no section of 
the country was there deeper interest in public affairs 
and more general and intelligent discussion of public 
questions than in the old South. It was the misfor- 
tune rather than the fault of the Southern people that 
slavery, being an anachronism in a cultivated modern 
society, diverted the vital forces of the section from 
their normal channel and interrupted natural develop- 
ment. 

The South never lacked institutions, like the Uni- © 
versity of Virginia, which kept alive the best tradi- 
tions of scholarship; it never lacked that fine old- 
fashioned culture which kept the delightful homes on 
the tidewaters of Virginia, on the South Carolina 
plantations, and in many other localities, in touch 
with the best of thought and art which the Old 
World could send to the New. Indeed, it may be 
questioned whether, within a much smaller circle, the 
love of letters for their own sake was not keener than 
in New England, where there was a much larger 
group of highly educated men, but where ethical and 


37 


religious questions made literature as literature a mat- 
ter of secondary importance. 

Social, industrial, and political conditions in the 
old South did not, however, foster and stimulate lit- 
erary expression. Plantation life produced a society 
which resembled-in taste and interest the English 
country society of the last century; social intercourse 
became one of the finest arts of life; but the attrition 
of mind with mind in cities was largely lost. None 
of the elements of an active literary life was present; 
writers were few; there were no publishers of means, 
and the circle of readers was too small to give an 
author of the first rank adequate support. The 
“Southern Literary Messenger,” under Poe’s editor- 
ship, seemed to promise definite encouragement to 
Southern writers and to offer a kind of leadership to 
Southern literary development; but Poe, although 
not lacking in editorial sagacity, was not fitted by 
temperament to do such a work. 

Professor William M. Thornton, of the University 
of Virginia, not long ago reviewed the literary his- 
tory of the South in an address full of affection for 
his section, but full also of sound literary judgment, 
an address which deserves careful reading at the 
hands of all Northern students of our literature. For, 
limited as was the literary expression of the old South, 
it has not, as arule, had adequate attention; the great 
majority of our literary histories and text-books have 
shown, in this respect, lamentable lack of perspective, 


38 


a lack due not to sectional prejudice, but to the pre- 
possessions of a period when for most Northern read- 
ers New England literature and American literature 
were interchangeable terms. - 

Poe, Timrod, and Lanier must be seriously reck- 
oned with in any adequate account of American litera- 
ture, and Professor Thornton is quite within bounds 
in claiming for them poetic equality with Bryant, 
Whittier, and Longfellow: 


Surely it is not the blind partiality of a Southerner 
for men and things Southern that makes me discern 
in our own poets—in Poe and Timrod and Lanier—a 
truer poetic spirit, a deeper union with the divine po- 
tencies of beauty and goodness and love, than are to 
be found in their brother singers—even in Bryant and 
Whittier and Longfellow. When we reflect upon 
the shortness of their sorrowing lives, on the anxie- — 
ties and sufferings which clouded their mortal days, 
on the noble courage with which they strove for op- 
portunity to utter forth their heaven-inspired mes- 
sages, on the rich possibilities of their fates had 
health and ease been given to them, our admiration 
for their genius is deepened, and all the fountains of 
our pity are unsealed. 


The South of to-day has, however, no explanations 
to make; her quota of writers of original gift and 
genuine art is perhaps more important than that fur- 
nished by any other section of the country. Mr. Har- 
ris is one of the first writers of the day by virtue of 
the freshness of his materials and of his art; Mr. Page 


39 


has given us those softly touched and deeply human- 
ized pictures of an older society which, in their sim- 
plicity and sincerity, carry the assurance of long life 
with them; Mr. Allen has interpreted another phase 
of the same social life with an art of surpassing 
beauty; the memory of Richard Malcolm Johnston 
will long be kept green by his delightful, humorous 
sketches of Middle Georgia; Mrs. Stuart knows how 
to set humor and pathos flowing, after the manner of 
nature, from the same springs; Miss King has shown 
the most sensitive and vital skill in her New Orleans 
studies; Mr. Cable’s art long ago evidenced his right 
to a permanent place in American fiction; Miss Mur- 
free has made the isolated plateau of the Tennessee 
country familiar ground to the whole country; and, 
latest of this vigorously gifted group, Miss Johnston 
has brought back with graphic skill the manner and 
spirit of the colonial times on the tidewaters of the 
James river. 

These writers exhibit very distinctly certain quali- 
ties of the Southern temperament from which much 
_ may be expected in the literature of the future. That 
temperament is strong in the primal qualities of litera- 
ture—passion, sentiment, emotion, and humor. It is 
not afraid of emotion, as the Northern temperament 
often is. It has a native bent towards certain high 
ideals, and has not been touched by the frost of the 
critical atmosphere. There is, perhaps, too little criti- 
cism in the South; but there is, on the other hand, 


that courage of emotion which all the great artist } 
have had. The work of these writers shows the origi- 
native impulses; it is not the product of ripe scholar-@ 
ship nor of a cosmopolitan culture; it comes from the} 
heart rather than from the analytical faculties ;, it deals! 
with the universal emotions, believes in them, exalts) 
them, and idealizes them. It is made of flesh and 
blood; it is, therefore, simple, tender, humorous, and 
Mioeeten human. And these qualities give atta 
that it has long life before it. a 
It is a matter of minor importance from what et 
tion our literature comes, so long as we have it; our 
real books belong to the whole country, wherever 
they happen to be born, but the contribution of the 
South of to-day to American letters is so significant 
and so characteristic that it ought to be studied mors 
carefully as a whok. 


| Gaylord Bros. 
Be ge et ‘cpt y 

acuse, N. Y. 
Pia. iN 21, 1908 


This book is due at the WALTER R. DAVIS LIBRARY on 
the last date stamped under ‘‘Date Due.” If not on hold it 
may be renewed by bringing it to the library. 


DATE 
DUE 


